The Skillery is a Nashville coworking space with resources and programming for freelancers, entrepreneurs, small teams and independent professionals, all aimed at making work meaningful, satisfying and unabashedly fun.

On April 9, CO.STARTERS for Food Entrepreneurs kicked off at our place in Germantown, with a cohort of 15 entrepreneurs joining us and Batch’s Sam Davidson for nine weeks of hands-on, action-based learning.

Over the course of those weeks, we’ll tackle everything from finding customers to calculating a break-even point as cohort members work on their businesses, test assumptions, get feedback and talk with mentors who’ve walked their path.

Some of those Nashville food-scene mentors are also taking part in a series of deep-dive sessions we’re hosting at the Nashville Farmers Market that were designed not only to bring more to our cohort, but to the community — so we’ve opened registration for these to the public.

The first session — a panel on Starting a Food Business with restaurateur Miranda Whitcomb, Grilled Cheeserie owners Crystal De Luna-Bogan and Joseph Bogan and others — went down Monday. It’ll be followed on Monday, April 27 by another panel focused on Branding and Marketing for the Food Industry (featuring Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and a cast of similarly fantastic panelists), then a Q&A on Legal Issues for Food Entrepreneurs on May 12, and another to be announced. If you’re working on or thinking about launching a food business, we’d love to have you at any/all.

We’re looking forward to sharing more about the cohort in the coming weeks. Meantime, take a look at captures from the first class up top, taken by Chris Creed. (Click the main image to see more.)

The curriculum for Introduction to Entrepreneurship was developed by The Skillery, and is available to organizations worldwide seeking to offer business education and community support to aspiring entrepreneurs.